Bob Smith Biography

New Hampshire’s Bob Smith was a high school teacher and realtor before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1985. A Republican, he moved up to the U.S. Senate in 1990 and was reelected in 1996. A conservative who was sometimes at odds with the Republican party (the GOP), he announced in February of 1999 that he would run for president in the 2000 election. Smith quit the GOP that summer to run as an independent, then dropped out of the race in October of 1999. Smith lost his Senate seat in 2002 and moved to Florida, where he took up the real estate business again. In late 2003 he flirted with a run for the senate from Florida. Since then he has served as the president of Florida’s Everglades Foundation, a conservation group.